In his captivating rat-a-tat-tat cadence, Rick Inatome — tech entrepreneur, company founder, and investor — covers his early years growing up in Detroit before jumping into the background of his Japanese-American parents, and now he’s seamlessly segued into chatting about his days as a 10-year-old, when he spent much of his free time assembling analog computers.
“By the way, I really do have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), so I’ll go all over the place,” he says, bursting into laughter.
It’s the perfect interval to somehow squeeze in what seems to be the obvious question: As an adolescent putting computers together, when did Inatome realize his future in the technology world was virtually assured?
“Well, the light bulb never really went off in my head,” he recalls. “But it did go off in my dad’s head.”
Inatome’s father grew up in San Francisco, his mother in Seattle. In mid-February 1942, just a few months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066.
It directed all Japanese-Americans on the West Coast to be immediately rounded up and held in prison camps surrounded by barbed wire, with no charges, no trials, and no due process.
“To get out of the camps before the war ended, you had to be sponsored,” Inatome explains. “Oddly enough, my mother’s family got sponsored by a Chrysler executive in Palmer Woods, and my dad got sponsored by a priest at the Episcopalian Church of St. Paul in Detroit. Then they both went to Wayne State University, and that’s where they met.”
Inatome was born in Detroit at Holy Cross Hospital and grew up in Warren, on Darlene Street east of Van Dyke Avenue and north of 11 Mile Road. It was there, among a long block of tidy brick ranch homes, that he began assembling analog computers.
“I’m proud of it now,” Inatome says with a wry laugh. “My father was one of those guys with a slide rule at all times, and a plastic pocket protector stuffed with pens. He worked at Giffels, one of the biggest architectural engineering firms in Detroit, and was the HVAC guy — which is heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. He started building software and writing programs to make his life easier.”
Inatome was enlisted by his father to help out. “Way before there was a computer revolution, you could buy basic things like Heathkits,” he says. “As a very young kid, my dad had me pick up a soldering iron and, as a good Asian son, I did what my dad asked me to do.”
Inatome continued to follow his dad’s instructions, all the way through Warren’s Cousino High School. Once he got to Michigan State University in September 1972, his dorm room doubled as a highly productive and lucrative workspace.

Rick Inatome, founder of Inacomp Computer Centers, was one of the early pioneers of personal computers. After launching Inacomp in the early 1980s, Inatome and his brother, Joe, acquired Computer City in 1983, which at one time was the nation’s second largest computer chain.
“I’m building these computers for my father’s friends,” he says. “Each kit was $499, but if you bought five at a time you got a 25 percent discount, so I could double my profit to 200 bucks for each one of these things I made.”
It all seemed too good to be true until the night Inatome was home from MSU for the weekend and heard some noises right outside the front door of his family’s house.
“It’s around two in the morning, and I’m figuring it’s my friends from high school coming (over),” Inatome recalls. “You could drink at 18 back then, and I’m thinking they see my car’s home and (they) started banging on the door.”
Just as Inatome got to the door to greet what he assumed were his buddies, it flew wide open.
“And there’s these two guys with guns in their hands, and the only thing they said was, ‘We just killed a cop, and we need a car.’ So I just put my hands up and said, ‘What do you need? I’ll get it for you.’ ”
The family owned four cars. Inatome quickly offered up the keys to one of them, which led to an indescribably odd reaction from the intruders. “Instead of leaving, one guy says, ‘You know what, let’s stay here for a while.’ And the other guy looks at him and he says, ‘Yeah, OK.’ ”
At which point Inatome made a surprising offer. “I just said, ‘Sure. Are you guys hungry? I’ll make you something to eat.’ ”
Over the next several hours, Inatome calmly pulled together a meal as he learned more ghastly details from his dinner guests. In no particular order, “they told me they broke out of a maximum security prison in Marquette. They stole a car and came down I-75, broke into a sporting goods store in Troy — which is when they killed the cop — and they also killed two other people.”

Inatome somehow maintained his composure throughout the conversation, as the two killers debated about when they should leave the area, and how.
“I even brought out a map of Warren, and we were talking about where the roadblocks might be, and the best ways to get out of there. Soon, it was starting to get light out, and I told them, ‘Listen, you guys gotta get out of here, because my parents are gonna wake up.’ ”
As if the cold-blooded killers of three people so far could care less about making a ruckus? But, amazingly, they not only adhered to their host’s suggestion, agreeing to leave immediately, but they also went along with a helpful tip from Inatome.
“They were worried about roadblocks, so I said, ‘We’ll take two cars. I’ll be in the front car, and if you see me get caught, it’ll give you time to do anything you want.’ They agreed, but then we got to Telegraph Road, and all of a sudden they pulled around me and took off at about a hundred miles an hour.”
Inatome flagged down the first police cruiser he saw and gave a description of the stolen car, which led to the fugitives being quickly apprehended. But none of what transpired that evening actually sunk in until later, when he told the police about his ordeal.
“And the chief says, ‘Do you realize how close you were to dying?’ ” Inatome says. “And that’s when my knees and legs and everything else start shaking. Until then, I hadn’t thought about anything I was doing that night. I was just reacting.”
Not surprisingly, Inatome says the events of that unforgettable evening were a turning point in his life.
“It gave me an inner confidence that no matter how bad things get, you can find your way through it,” he says. “And if you need something, just go ahead and ask for it. What do you have to lose?”

In 1976, soon after graduating from MSU with a bachelor’s degree in economics, and with the help of his father, Inatome launched the early iteration of a company that would ultimately become Inacomp Computer Centers. The premise was to not only sell computers to the general public, but provide computer education and instructions through a network of local colleges and schools, focusing on how to maximize their use.
The game plan helped to build the early market in Michigan for the new technology. So did the next move made by Inatome and his father.
“We rented a little 500-square-foot place in Royal Oak, but then quickly moved to Troy, and I’d build computers on one table and on the other sell Byte and the other early hobbyist magazines.”
Over time, Inacomp grew into a $7-billion, Fortune 500 business, and Inatome would go on to launch Computer City, a multibillion-dollar superstore chain. He also founded and managed various private equity funds, served on numerous boards, and at 71 has achieved a level of success that was unimaginable all those years ago, in the exhilarating pioneering days of the digital age.
Back then, Inatome was one of the tech industry’s original whiz kids, destined to be known as a legendary entrepreneur and innovator.
“There was Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak from Apple, and some other early guys you never heard of, and (one day early on) we’re jumping up and down on a trampoline in Bill Gates’ backyard in Seattle,” Inatome recalls.
“So, you’re on this huge rocket ship and it’s pulling you, and you don’t know where it’s going, and you gotta figure it out before it gets there. And you had to do it collectively with software, hardware, manufacturing, and distributing.”
Universally recognized as a driving force in the effort that introduced the personal computer to corporate America, as well as countless millions of everyday users, Inatome has no plans to settle down anytime soon.

“I’ve retired and un-retired three times, and now it’s about being a part of helping the next generation. And when you think about it, there’s nothing more critical and more at risk than education.”
In the early 1990s, Inatome was part of an investment group that acquired Sylvan Learning Centers, building it into the nation’s largest supplemental learning and tutoring provider, and offering teacher training, computerized testing, distance learning, and other educational services.
Inatome’s involvement with Sylvan was the culmination of his lifelong interest in education, and his firm belief in its power as an essential tool for maximizing human potential.
“It’s our entire future,” he says bluntly. “But we’re anywhere between 22nd and 30th in the world when it comes to education — nowhere near being competitive — and I’m taking a look at where the intersection of education and technology could help.”
Inatome offers a specific example at a school under his purview: Léman Prep School in New York City, with a student body ranging in age from 12 months old through 12th grade.
“People are spending $60,000 to $100,000 a year at my schools, literally from K to 12,” he says. “A hundred grand a year, right? But there’s a lot of research that says 95 percent of your brain is formed in the five years from K to 5. So I’m looking at how to make that first 95 percent more relevant, and I think the answer will not come solely from Silicon Valley.
“I’ve been looking at some technology-enabled family networking structures in primarily underdeveloped countries,” Inatome adds. “They’re evolving Pre-K and 1-5 children at a rate we’re not seeing in the U.S. So, the best way to leapfrog may be not to work with the privileged communities through traditional classrooms, but instead in cities like Detroit where the leapfrog mandate is more easily grasped — and, more importantly, (it’s) a necessity.”
Inatome is clearly excited about the idea, exuding the same enthusiasm and sense of purpose that was on display all those years ago, giddily bouncing around on a trampoline and spitballing ideas that would soon change the world.
“And it was all kids,” Inatome says. “There weren’t any real adults in any of these rooms. We didn’t know what we were doing, but I think we were all bonded by a vague feeling that we were onto something.
“Now, with the benefit of some hindsight, my guess is that if we were confident about any of it, we would have assuredly screwed it up. So, probably better to be young, naive, and optimistic, than assured, arrogant, and determined to prove ourselves right.”
Looking back on the early days of personal computers, Inatome says the pace of change was unlike anything he had experienced. “It became about who could think of something 15 minutes faster, and then try to convince the other guys that was the right way to go.”
For Inatome, it proved to be a surefire formula for spectacular success during his entire career, and most assuredly for his very survival on that harrowing long-ago evening with two killers in his house.